


Dare Me To Breathe

by philomel



Category: Free!
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 01:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11243232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philomel/pseuds/philomel
Summary: How to breathe underwater. Or, failing that, how not to drown in one’s own thoughts and feelings.Or: overly poetic pseudo-Lamaze lessons.





	Dare Me To Breathe

What you never quite get over is how it isn’t possible to breathe underwater.

Hold your breath, and it only lasts a minute — more or less, given intake — before reflexes push. And, up, up, up, gasping in and in and in. The reminder to exhale, the trick to even everything out again, lags behind. But there it is, the conscious fight against involuntary self-destruction. The need for air tricking your brain against your own survival. 

Yes, breathe. Out. One. Two. Three. Four and in. One. Two. Three. Four and repeat.

Always the fear of drowning. Makoto wonders if it will ever go away completely. It sinks low, deep into the recesses of his mind. But it lodged itself long ago, an anchor that only allows him to wander so far before dragging him back into place. 

It's so quiet too, the way the fear returns. Shivering up from the bottom of his stomach. It mimics thrill, it masks itself in the same sensation as desire. Until it twists. And then he sees it for what it really is. 

How it can turn him over, flipped like he's weightless. Here on the water where he practically is weightless, but where he also has no place of purchase. It shifts the stars in the sky, blocking their beauty or, perhaps, unveiling the dead things they are. Lying light, hollow sockets holding puddles of aged celestial bodies, things beyond history, things so difficult to fully comprehend, the easiest response is to shake it off and let it slip off to the side. 

Why can't he just drift here and take in the beauty of the sky above him? Why, these stealing things that snatch his breath? Unseen thieves. And visible ones, too far to reach. Too far to be real. 

The worst is when it comes after him when all he does is turn his head, and something within him draws tight, constricting his lungs, obstructing his airway. He knows it's inside him. He can't place blame on the sight before him. He can't put the cause on this body floating beside him. Always beside him. If not that, then behind him on land, no more than a step or two. Occasionally, a foot or two ahead, slow enough to catch up to. Like he's waiting. He is, Makoto remembers. 

Haruka moves at his own pace, but always falls into synch with Makoto. 

Even if it's Makoto who's pulling him back into place. Because all other places parallel another type of drowning. The air too thin, too elusive. There might be a joke about the altitude up there, Makoto having grown so tall above all his friends. “How's the weather up there?” Always someone incapable of resisting that old question. The answer, Makoto knows, depends upon the proximity of Haruka. But he smiles and laughs, light shift of breath in and out, no matter how many times he's asked that tired old rhetorical question. Even if, inside, he's taking it too seriously. “Where's Haru?” people ask even more often. And it's typically half-rhetorical too. Where should he be but right there next to Makoto? Even Makoto must admit that is the answer. 

But is it?

There he is, beside him. On the surface of the water, Haruka floats like nowhere else could ever be a better home. 

So what does that make Makoto? He doesn't want to be jealous of water, doesn't want to villainize something that simply _is_. Moreover, he doesn't want to do that to something Haruka reveres. The water, to Haruka, offers itself up as not only a religion, but also the god and goddess of that faith. A tangible deity. Haruka offers himself back to it. An exchange as natural as breathing. Every time he dives in, Haruka seems to say, with curved arms and vulnerably open body, _I'm here_. And it welcomes him, letting him slip in with barely a splash to unsettle the placidity of the pool or interrupt the ebb and flow of the ocean current.

_I'm here too,_ Makoto thinks weakly. The water can be your shrine and fortune and god. But. Please let me be your home.

And that thought betrays him too. He gasps quietly as soon as it intrudes. Before the realization comes to him completely, it has already settled in. Home. Haruka is home. So, Makoto thinks. So.

He should be mine.

It aches deep in his bones, cold coiling up and seizing his chest again. 

_I'm not supposed to think this way,_ he fights back. _It's selfish._ But it's as stupid to struggle against this as it is to swim away from an undertow.

He keeps looking at Haru — quick glances and shameless staring. And those selfish thoughts narrow down to just one: mine. 

Mine. The lithe boy, cut to fit the water. Mine, the blunt boy, too cutting in his remarks that Makoto must smooth them over, calming the person left scratching his or her head at whatever impoliteness Haruka has unknowingly (or, more often, quite knowingly) uttered. Mine, the boy whose small smiles seem like a shared secret between only the two of them. Therefore, mine, he thinks. No one else gets this, so no one else should.

And it's always been this way, hasn't it?

That's why it frustrates Makoto, this burden that breathing has become now that the knowledge has made it's way up, up where he can see it. 

His head clears the water, but he tries holding his breath anyway. Fight fire with fire, he thinks. Or not quite that.

It rushes over him all the same. Drags him under. And he feels like Rei before he found his form, going down and down. And he feels like a smaller version of himself, kicking against the water that takes and only gives back when it's too late. He feels like that little boy who hasn't yet learned the backstroke. The little boy who grips Haruka's hand too tightly as the procession passes by. The little boy who grabs Haruka by the arm and shakes his head and squeezes his eyes shut and won't let go until Haruka comes away from the surf with an exhale that sounds like exasperation, but belies sadness at the friend who doesn't understand the water the way Haruka does.

Makoto falls. Floating on the surface of the pool, facing the sky full of countless, unknowable stars. Then facing Haruka. 

He knows this. He knows this feeling because it was always there waiting. Haruka is more than anyone knows. Haruka is more. _Haru is mine._ He is home. He is, he is....

"Haru." Makoto says his name so quietly, sucking in all the air he can, which is too little.

The lit up sky swallows his periphery. The smeared reflection of the stars smudges the blue pool surrounding them. Haruka blurs beside him on the water. 

He opens his eyes wider to clear them. His buoyancy fails, and the bulk of his body tips downward. He knows how to move his legs to find his way back up. But they resist him. His taut arms won't loosen out of the fists he's formed. He wants to move them, get himself back. He wants to reach out. But he's the one who's supposed to save Haruka. 

Yet the water stays beneath him. The water uncovers his face. The water won't take him.

"Don't turn your back on it," he says. Haruka's voice comes to him like a stilling wave. It is not steady, but it steadies Makoto. As do Haruka's hands, splayed beneath him, in the places where his spine dips, heels of his palms fitted perfectly. 

Makoto winces. He gasps like a shored fish. The wetness on his cheeks runs down past his ears, merges back into the pool. He isn't sure if it's water from the pool. He can't be sure if he was drowning. He doesn't quite know what Haruka means. Does he?

"Haru?" 

A hand slips under him and over his stomach, light but solid on his diaphragm. 

"Breathe," Haruka says. And he breathes in deeply, audibly. Makoto follows a beat behind. So Haruka holds for a second before breathing out. And Makoto catches up.

His eyelids twitch, but he maintains contact with Haruka, who doesn't seem to blink. He locks on to Makoto, nodding as their breaths match up. Even if Makoto's keeps stuttering.

_Mine?_ his brain questions. And, "Haru," he tries to say.

But Haruka says, "Breathe. Makoto, just breathe."

So he breathes. Until the sky recedes into a pinprick. Until the pool seems to drain away. Until it's just Haruka above him, holding him up. Only him, only ever him. Not quite a religion, not so flawless to be a god, but something similar to the water for Haruka. Something necessary like air. 

Makoto's lungs fill with what they need. The same air shared with Haruka. He closes his eyes and sees him still, like light imprinted under his skin. Not gone. Not away. In fact, closer. _Closer?_ he thinks, fluttering open to find his vision full of Haruka. Blurred again. This time, not by panic, but by the nearness of him. Lips brush his. Haruka breathes out. And Makoto breathes in. He feels the air press low toward his belly, and empties it out slowly. Haruka's mouth is damp and soft, inhaling against him, not moving closer but not moving away.

Again, he wants to say Haruka's name. His full name, every syllable, every chance to feel the skin of Haruka's lips against his own. The tantalizing desire to let their mouths slip closer. The selfish tug to risk pressing closer, ever so slightly. Let this be mine, he thinks.

"Makoto," Haruka says. And it's _his_ lips slipping over Makoto's, the syllables of Makoto's name pushing them closer with little puffs of air. 

Their breath falls out of synch. 

But Haruka's hands balance him from both sides, curling in possessively. "Makoto, I have you," Haruka tells him. "The water won't take you."

His eyes fall shut. Makoto can tell by the tickle of Haruka's eyelashes against his cheek. Bent over him, Haruka blocks out all of the light — from the stars, the moon, the flickering street lamps buzzing like insects in the distance. He feels enveloped like this, swallowed up. A drowning thing. 

Happily drowning, Makoto dares to let his thoughts up and out. Into the hot, dense air they keep to themselves. Into the quiet, cloistered space they've made. Within the water, within the night, but separate from all of it. Only Makoto and Haruka.

"Yours." Makoto says it like an offering, only a tiny lilt belying the question at the edge of it.

He holds his breath. Not quite out of fear, but maybe. It's a knee-jerk reaction, silencing himself to hear better. 

He doesn't hold his breath long. There's barely a wait, hardly a hesitation.

"Mine," Haruka says. And his lips press against Makoto's, tongue slipping forward on the sibilance, catching on Makoto's teeth. 

Makoto surges up to meet him. His feet find the bottom of the pool, so much closer than it had seemed moments ago. His thumbs feather over the shells of Haruka's ears as his fingers brace against the back of his head, holding him, angling him as they change positions. Now Haruka below and Makoto above.

Haruka's hands push upward, skimming the surface of Makoto's skin, to cling to one shoulder blade from behind and close over the other shoulder from the front. Haruka's fingers trip over quick-drying skin, backs of his nails trailing along the slope of Makoto's neck and up into his hair. His hand shifts, opening then melding against the shape of Makoto's skull. The press of the pads of fingertips to his scalp, the almost less-than-gentle tug at his hair — these simple movements have Makoto moaning into Haruka's mouth. They show Makoto what Haruka tried to tell him.

Blood pounds fast in his ears. All of these realizations hitting one after the other. Unforgiving waves. What Haruka is to him. What he is to Haruka.

_Of course,_ he thinks, catching his breath against Haruka's cheek. 

Haruka moves ahead, dragging his bottom lip along Makoto's neck to the underside of his jaw, scraping his teeth against the soft indent below his chin. He dips his head lower, sucks softly at Makoto's Adam's apple. It's bound to mark, raising red and, later, questions. And, of course, no one needs the answer. It's simple. It's already there.

Makoto nudges his nose under a lock of wet hair, and whispers against the top of Haruka's head. "Mine." 

Humming against his neck, Haruka softly kisses the spot he just claimed. Lips then, with a tilt of his head, teeth again, light but insistent. 

Sliding upward, Haruka claims Makoto's mouth, less lightly and more insistent. "Yours too," he says. And he cranes his neck back, eyes closed and mouth open. An offering.

Moving before thinking, Makoto grazes his teeth against the arc of Haruka's neck, feeling the delicate skin beneath him. He finds the place on Haruka that mirrors the place he marked on Makoto, and draws him in with breath and teeth and tongue. He breathes hard against this spot, eyes squeezed shut, not moving, as if keeping the touch in place. As if moving will make everything disappear.

But Haruka's hands cup his face and urge him up. 

Makoto opens his eyes and everything is there. 

Haruka is there.

It's silly and trite and ineloquent. Yet it's true.

With one angle, Haruka's eyes reflect the starlit sky. Another downcast angle, they reflect the soft sloshing of water around them. In his pupils, Makoto can see a distortion of himself. But as he moves closer, they widen, darken.

* * *

In the dark, later, Haruka will mark him again. In new places. In newly-made favorites. Each will take Makoto's breath away. And Makoto will wait, counting one, two, three, and. There. Haruka will kiss it back. Giving and stealing the air from Makoto. Moving against him like waves, lazy and slow or hard and crashing. Dragging him down, down, down.

Makoto will always be afraid of drowning. The sea will call out his fear.

But Haruka will keep him breathing. Sometimes short and shallow. Sometimes deep and low. He will show him endless stars, even when he blocks out the sky. 

Lying on his back, staring up at Haruka, bed sheets pooled around their feet, Makoto need not worry about breathing underwater. He will lift his head up and cut through the air quicker than water. 

And Haruka will be there to meet him. Waiting, catching up, falling into the same rhythm. 

What you never quite get over is how easy it is to be like this. How nothing else ever compares.

This is how you find your way home.

**Author's Note:**

> • Beta: My one true raynemaiden3.
> 
> • Title taken from R.E.M.’s “Try Not to Breathe.” The original line — as I only recently realized, after years of thinking it was the same as the title — is “don’t dare me to breathe.” But I think the misheard/incomplete version of the line fits the fic better.


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